This invention relates to a railway car of the gondola or hopper types commonly used to carry bulk materials, such as coal, sand, gravel, ore and the like It relates particularly to a railway car which is loaded through its open top and unloaded through the bottom or in a rotary car dumper which inverts the entire car to unload its contents.
Many cars are currently used to transport coal to utility plants and to steel plants. If those plants are located in the northern part of the United States or Canada, the coal in such cars frequently freezes during the winter as it is being transported and makes dumping difficult. Utilities and steel plants are required to install car thawing facilities to thaw the frozen coal in the cars sufficiently to permit the coal to be dumped.
The car thawing facilities usually consist of a long shed capable of containing about a dozen cars at one time and equipped with gas burners laid alongside and between the track rails to heat the bottoms of the frozen cars for several hours.
It has been observed that when the thawed cars are dumped, frozen coal often still adheres to the car body in the area of the slope floors at the ends of the car. This requires a further thawing and delay in unloading of the car.